Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: In the real world, we often encounter people espousing various pseudo-scientific and pseudo-intellectual ideas about lucid dreaming. But in this world, there is much more to dreams and the process of dreaming. For mages, it is normal to dream lucidly, and their ability to manipulate the fabric of the dreamlands is much greater than for an average person. As such, maladaptive ways of dreaming arise. Taps the mind sets for itself on the other side of the Gate.
Those with a scant fascination with the wandering whims of the medical school of psychology might’ve encountered or heard of the term ‘Maladaptive Daydreaming’ in passing. It’s a semi-recognized, and semi-scientific term that ascribes a ‘too much is too bad’ nom de guerre to the habits of people subsumed by wanting. A weakness of the mind much as the troubled soul, willingly or unwillingly slipping between the boundaries of day and daydream. The use of the term is often laced with a kind of erratic disdain for the patient and their unfortunate condition, but it helps paint the frame of the subject relevant to us.
So. The woven cord that ties Magi and the Dream together is a familiar and trodden topic, even amongst mewling novitiates. Doubtless, you wouldn’t need a reintroduction, and mayhaps you’ve found yourself already connecting the dots I mean to lay.
Magi have an innate and almost boundless ability to control their wants and whims within the dream state. Any and almost every magistrate has spoken at length about this once before. While the dreamscape is beyond mortal, or conceivably immortal touch and measure, magi can influence it in their own, usual and unusual ways where those less magically inclined come to do so subconsciously. This is hardly peculiar or in any way new to most, but it’s important to knit it together with the larger embroidery that magic weaves out of the dream’s many and disorderly threads. For there to be logic, there needs to be reason.
Thusly, our attention should not be turned towards the means or actions that those magi who think to explore the whims of a dream. Rather, it should be directed towards what comes of these actions when wrought by the hands of a magi who begins to hungrily relish the taste of bidden control over the wondrous unconscious. Whereas none but a discernible and select few, who might flock at the chance to frown at an exploration of such dubious senses would think to judge one for exploring the dream, our concern comes to rest with those who find themselves truly lost therein.
It’s not a matter of losing yourself being easier than it might first seem to those unawares; it’d be silly to compare bending the dream’s whims to taking drugs. When we speak of losing yourself and becoming addicted to it, it’s not the same as inebriation or stumbling into the clingy patterns of gambling and spending. It does not build into a conscious need that you don’t know how to slither away and transcend from, that nagging ‘just one more’ into wanton oblivion: it becomes like a part of you. A new limb that clings to new, addictively creative synapses. The line in the sand between the waking world and the dream blurs, and grows curiously heady.
Some magi, often those with a particular talent for finding their way through the dream’s weave, lose themselves to the act. They become like a ghost in the machine, a scant face torn and squeezed in the spaces between the cogs, driving them as much as they are driven along. Like so, they don’t necessarily become a cautionary tale, but rather a strange err that’s befallen those with a stronger talent, now long lost. It’s a curious, horrible thing.
Esoteric Musings... 